New Arms, New Attitude: China Flexing Its Muscles

September 29, 1992|By Uli Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune.

BEIJING — China has been flexing its muscles in recent months, trying to show its neighbors and the rest of the world that the end of the Cold War has left Mao Tse-tung`s heirs as the undisputed strongmen of Asia.

While the dissolution of the Soviet empire had prompted global hopes for the dawn of a new era of peaceful coexistence, Beijing`s leaders have been busily expanding and modernizing their military arsenal mainly by buying sophisticated high-tech Soviet weaponry at bargain prices.

Perhaps emboldened by American and Russian withdrawal from Asian military bases, the Chinese have made it clear they won`t shy away from the use of force to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea, where rich oil and natural gas resources are vital to the industrial growth that is the regime`s key to social stability.

Just to show who`s boss, Chinese speedboats since August have stopped 21 cargo ships steaming south from Hong Kong and confiscated their loads with the excuse that they were carrying smuggled goods to Vietnam.

Britain is scheduled to hand over control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and outraged British diplomatic protests have gone unanswered by Beijing.

That has prompted shipping agents to speculate that the central government is turning a blind eye to private buccaneering by local warlords and senior communist officials along China`s rich southern coast, with the help of their ubiquitous public security branches.

Last Friday, Chinese public security agents who had boarded a fishing trawler in Hong Kong territorial waters held the crew of a Hong Kong police launch at gunpoint. The Chinese then tore the film from a camera that the Hong Kong police had used to document the illegal boarding.

The Chinese made their raid from a tai fei, a long-nosed speedboat. Beijing`s navy has confiscated many of these multi-engine ``rocket boats``

from Hong Kong smugglers for use in a fleet staffed by uniformed Chinese officers.

``Even theft can be carried out in the national interest. The Chinese are getting more and more arrogant and greedy, especially along the southern coast,`` complained one shipping agent who lost three ships in recent months but still prefers anonymity.

Most of the ships stopped en route from Hong Kong were in fact headed for the port of Hong Gai on the northern tip of Vietnam.

Oddly, Hanoi has become a favorite Chinese target since the two countries normalized relations last November. Some analysts call this a Chinese tactic of ``making peace to rob the enemy.``

Sino-Vietnamese relations were close to the breaking point on Sept. 4 after Beijing moved an oil rig and accompanying vessels into the Gulf of Tonkin and began drilling for oil 78 miles off the coast of the North Vietnamese province of Thai Binh.

This violated an agreement reached in the 1970s to leave the gulf unexplored until its north-south boundary, which divides Chinese and Vietnamese waters, had been settled.

This was not an isolated instance.

China had promised, for instance, to stay out of disputed oil-rich waters near the Spratly and Paracel Islands, whose sovereignty has been contested for years by six nations: China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore.

But last February, China`s rubberstamp National Assembly passed a law annexing as Chinese territory all disputed islands, including the entire Spratly archipelago. The surprise move has led most of China`s neighbors to reassess their military capabilities.

President Bush recently sanctioned the sale of 150 F-16 fighter-bombers to Taiwan, which also is buying sophisticated French Mirage fighters.

Malaysia is looking for tactical fighter planes and submarines, Indonesia reportedly is buying 39 ships from the disbanded East German navy, the Philippines have a contract for Israeli Kfir fighters and L-39 trainer aircraft from Czechoslovakia, and even tiny Brunei wants to buy British Hawk combat planes. Both Singapore and Thailand plan to upgrade their own air forces.

Said one Western military attache in Beijing: ``Nobody in Asia wants to be bullied by 1.1 billion Chinese. That is everyone`s nightmare.``

The preoccupation with Beijing`s military muscle is not unjustified.

- In April, Chinese troops landed on a reef in the Spratly Islands, which are claimed by Vietnam, and established what Beijing called ``a sovereignty port``-in fact, no more than a hut perched precariously on stilts on a coral rock.

- In May, China signed an agreement with Colorado-based Crestone Energy Corp. to survey for oil in an area that Vietnam claims as part of its continental shelf. The company`s spokesman said there had been assurances that the Chinese navy would protect the exploratory mission.

- In June, Beijing shook its neighbors when it exploded a 1,000-kiloton nuclear bomb in northwestern Xinjiang region, a blast 70 times stronger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima and a reminder that the Chinese are major nuclear players.